The theme of this year’s International Women's Day is ‘Inspire Inclusion’. BCS President Gillian Arnold shares her thoughts on the importance of inclusivity within our industry.
To mark International Women’s Day 2024, Gillian Arnold, President of BCS, explores the barriers that are dissuading women from entering the IT industry and the forces that hinder progression in tech careers. If we can address these, she says, the IT industry will be better able to design and engineer products that serve society and make lives better.
At BCS we champion diversity, inclusivity and ethical practices. From your perspective, how can we create a more inclusive profession as a whole?
Creating an inclusive culture across our industry has to be driven by the senior leadership. If it's only coming from the grassroots, and if it doesn't have the support of those in senior management, then it's incredibly hard to drive any real change from a diversity and inclusion perspective.
We have to ensure that the senior leadership fully understand what being inclusive really means — if they don't fully understand it, if they don't live and breathe those values every day, then it will be impossible to create that all important culture of inclusivity that leads to a truly inclusive profession. There are many grassroots groups that have pushed hard to gain recognition for women in tech, but when it comes to the big companies, if it's not supported by those senior decision makers, then it will go nowhere. In addition, everybody within the organisation needs to recognise the importance of a diverse and inclusive workplace.
“If you are equal, if you are fair, if you are ethically sound, if you have a good professional code of conduct, then inclusivity and diversity should come naturally.”
One of the things that's going on at the moment is that the government is telling councils that they need to stop spending on equality, diversity and inclusion because it feels that they should be spending money on areas deemed more important. But what that fails to recognise is that when you get inclusion right then you will benefit in terms of profitability, additional innovation, productivity and so on. There is incredible value in getting inclusion right, and you can’t inspire inclusion if you don't invest in it.
From your perspective, what do you believe to be the greatest barriers to women progressing in tech careers?
There are places within the IT industry that are still culturally not welcoming to women, and much work needs to be done to ensure that this is no longer the case. One example is the ‘tech bro’ culture that it still prevalent within many areas. One of the things I’ve been working on recently is a piece of research with the Open University and Aberystwyth University into micro behaviours.
It was alarming to discover from the various heads of faculty that when it comes to young women completing undergraduate courses and heading into the world of work, there are places that those young women won't go. Many won't look for jobs in game creation, for example, or DevOps. They don't want to work in Fintech, and indeed to some extent in finance. The impression they get is that the culture in those areas is somewhat toxic and they don't want the stress and anxiety that working in such an environment will bring; they simply don’t want to get involved.
Essentially a toxic culture is limiting their career prospects, and this is terribly sad. It all comes back to the type of management that you have within an organisation and whether they understand the value of equality, and even acknowledge that there is a problem. Whether you’ve taken an apprenticeship, just finished university, or just have a keen interest in tech, our industry should be a supportive, nurturing and inclusive place — an equal environment for all. Furthermore, if we can address these barriers, the IT industry will be better able to design and engineer products that serve society and make lives better.
What would you say to inspire young women to pursue a career in tech, and how important are the presence of strong role models?
We recently heard that the number of young women in the UK applying to start computing degrees in 2024 has risen by 10% on last year, which is incredibly encouraging. Working in IT, working in tech is incredibly exciting. The fact that there are fewer women than men within the technology profession actually means that any young woman embarking on an IT career can be next year’s superstar because the female perspective has not always been represented.
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There are new technologies that women will be part of discovering, uncovering and creating that can benefit from a woman's perspective on the world, which is really positive. When it comes to role models, it’s not just about people in senior roles who have been in the industry for a long time, but about proper representation of all age groups.
What that means is that companies need to be constantly monitoring their pipelines so that if they're getting great numbers of women in at very junior levels then they want to be sure that they've got women in roles all the way through the ranks. And in fact, when hiring new employees it sometimes means taking longer to go through the process because you need equal numbers of women and men in your candidate pool. And we’re getting better as an industry at showcasing the fantastic work of women in tech, but we need greater representation in the media, for example, to create real impact, so there’s much work to be done.
During your time as BCS President, what has been a particular highlight?
One of the things that I've really enjoyed has been working with the BCS ICT ethics specialist group committee, because ethics fits so well with BCS’ work to champion diversity and inclusivity. If you are equal, if you are fair, if you are ethically sound, if you have a good professional code of conduct, then inclusivity and diversity should come naturally.
Last year, we decided to survey the membership about living and working with AI and emerging technologies. We wanted to find out whether they had any ethical concerns and how they were being supported by their management. It gave members an opportunity to provide their thoughts on the importance of professionalism in tech, and was a fantastic opportunity to learn about how people are working and companies are operating, in terms of inclusivity, fairness and cultural correctness.
Conducting that survey, evaluating the findings and being able to write the resulting paper has been a real highlight of my presidency. Just because you are a President doesn't mean to say that you stop doing all of those things that are important to the membership, and I think that ethics paper is massively important to BCS, our membership, ethical practices and the professionalism of our industry in general.
